Article Submitted by, Tammy Wilson, Director of Advancement, Toowoomba Grammar School QLD
Building and sustaining a thriving volunteer program is no easy task, regardless of whether you are commencing your volunteer journey or have a long-established program.
Volunteers, from grassroots to Board level, are vitally important to education institutions. Maintaining productive working relationships, with clear processes and guidelines, is a core function of advancement offices. While there are a myriad of opportunities and challenges in volunteer involvement, there are core elements that contribute to the long-term success and sustainability of volunteer initiatives.
Whether your volunteer program is in its infancy or well-established, there is a four-step model to help you set up, refine and maintain a successful program: Purpose, Structure, Support and Engagement.
Purpose
A clear purpose for your volunteer program, set by the school, is crucial to inform direction and actions. This should sit comfortably alongside relevant P&F or alumni constitutions. It should be your North Star when making decisions about volunteer activities.
Structure
Your volunteer structure should ensure volunteers are grouped appropriately and that your governance and procedures are clearly articulated to all staff and volunteers.
Structure is where schools struggle. It takes time and resourcing to achieve. Often, your volunteers are already active, and it can be hard to retrofit policies and procedures around existing programs. My advice is to review what you have and refine it. Then look at what’s missing. Sort this into order of importance and work through the list – be methodical.
Support
Ongoing support of, and involvement with, your volunteers is crucial. Regular interaction ensures volunteers feel supported and valued. A ‘no surprises’ approach is beneficial for all.
It is also important to support school staff. Often, most volunteer support comes from an Advancement department. When support comes from outside of your team – IT, finance, HR, etc – you need to work internally with those teams to ensure they understand the importance of supporting your volunteers.
Without these structures and support, you will not create productive volunteers. We need to empower volunteers to be as self-sufficient as possible; with scope and capacity to drive their own activities. The alternative is volunteers ending up creating more work for school staff.
Engagement
As with support, engagement needs to be continuous – assessing purpose, structures and supports. This provides opportunities to refine, tweak and remain operationally efficient.
Flexibility is key throughout – make it easy for volunteers to contribute when and how they can.
Volunteers add enormous value to our organisations. Taking time to create appropriate volunteer program models will pay off in the long run.
Top tips
· Create specific, niche opportunities to volunteer – play to volunteers’ strengths and skills
· Break volunteering down into bite-sized chunks to suit busy schedules
· Create supportive school frameworks and networks around volunteers – make it easy
· Recruit a diverse base of volunteers – bring in a range of experiences, skills and perspectives
· Hold an annual induction session for volunteers
· Have a representative from each volunteer group attend your P&F meeting to create a two-way flow of information
Tammy Wilson
Director of Advancement,
Toowoomba Grammar School QLD
